One of those was the Tartessians. Tartessos was located in the southwest of present-day Spain (Huelva, Sevilla, and Cádiz). Modern investigations consider this civilization to be the natural evolution of the local people influenced by the relations with the Phoenician traders. The first reference to Tartessos comes from the Greek author Hecataeus of Miletus, in the 6th century B.C. After him, Herodotus and Strabo are the main sources of information, especially the last one, whose work Geographica is the base of all the modern knowledge about pre-roman Spain. It is said that the form of government of this civilization was the monarchy and that they had laws established, as Strabo stated, for over 6.000 years.

The rulers of this civilization were mythological. The first ruler of Tartessos was Geryon, a three-headed giant. He is also known for being the Tenth Labour of Heracles. The next ruler was his grandson, Norax, son of the Greek god Hermes and Geryon’s daughter, Erytheia. He later conquered the south of Sardinia and founded the city of Nora. After him came Gargoris, the son of the other daughter of Geryon, Evenor, and Poseidon. He was considered to be a good king for the Tartessian people and according to the myth he invented beekeeping. Gargoris had a son with his daughter and tried to hide him from the world by abandoning him. The child was raised by deers and became their leader. He taught them how to avoid the hunters, who got angrier and angrier to see their traps unleashed. One day, a hunter managed to trap the man and brought him to the king, Gargoris, who recognized him as his child and named him Habis. When his father died, he became the new king of Tartessos and made it flourish with new laws and a new social organization system.

Sources

Gonzalez Wagner, C., 2014. Tartessos Mito e Historia. [online] Eprints.ucm.es. Available at: <https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/24565/1/Tartessos.%20Mito%20e%20Historia%20(Nuevo).pdf> [Accessed 30 May 2022].